Daddy's Lies
by Tigerclaw
Summary: Aspen and Darius find out the World is Darker than it seems. (HtR Fic)
1. Awakenings

December 15, 2003. 2:15 AM

_Oh my god. The things I saw tonight. It was horrible…all that blood…those screams, so unholy sounding…I almost pissed myself! Wait…maybe I should start at the beginning. I'm Darius Hunt. A fitting name I guess…considering what I saw today…see, you're going to think I'm crazy! I saw an honest do badness dead girl at Sam's Pizza in the mall today. She was just walking along like nothing was wrong, chatting with a friend some boy. But I saw her clear as day for what she really was…_

            Darius Hunt hurried along with the evening crowd milling about in the Cherry Sands Mall, his sneakered feet carrying him along at a nice pace as he tried not to bump into anyone while carrying his bags full of Christmas gifts for his family and friends. It wasn't quite closing time yet, but rush hour was just winding down and he wanted to get home and finish his homework. The huge ivory clocktower like fixture that was the centerpiece of the two story mall began to gong loudly seven times, marking the top of the hour.

            Darius frowned and looked at his watch before he clutched his trenchcoat tighter and lifted his bag to his shoulder to carry it easier. As he passed Nieman Marcus, he saw a face he hadn't seen in about three years, not since his fourteenth birthday party. It was a girl whose name took a moment to come to his mind...Sherry. That's it.  Her name was Sherry.  She'd always been a pretty girl, lustrous blonde hair and nice curves. A great rack, Darius's father had observed drunkenly once. That had been before he left Darius and his mom alone to fend for themselves a year back. The thought brought a pang of coldness to Darius's heart, but he ignored it and let his eyes linger on Sherry's body as she passed.

            She was walking with another girl, and they were holding hands. Giggling and eye contact, with rather obviously suggestive rubbing up against each other too, made Darius suspect maybe they were lovers. That thought brought a different pang to Darius and he tried to force it down. He watched them for a few moments before they disappeared to the bathroom. He shrugged and turned away, toward the exit. Best to make it home sooner than later, maybe Mom had cooked something.

            He hadn't made it five steps when the vision hit him. It was sudden and intense, filling his real vision and making him close his eyes as his mind's eye came into sharp focus. It made Darius's head feel like it was splitting open and he dropped his bag of Christmas goodies on the ground with a sharp crash on the tile and put his hand to his throbbing temple. He saw a hazy, vague sight of Sherry and the other girl in one of the stalls in the bathroom. The girl's naked breast was in Sherry's hand under her pink sweater and Sherry was licking the pink nipple while the girl squirmed and Sherry suddenly seemed to decay in front of Darius's eyes, like one of those FX shots in the movies. She opened a mouth full of rotting sharp teeth and plunged them into the girl's shoulder. The girl screamed terrified in his vision and he heard a sharp voice in his head:

**IT FEEDS.**

            Then just as quickly, the vision ended. Darius fell stunned to his knees, oblivious to the passerby observers watching him with concern and offering him a hand up. He jumped to his feet, pushing a hand through suddenly sweat dampened blonde brown hair and started to run toward the bathroom, pushing through the crowd. That vision was too real, it brought to mind thoughts uncomfortably quick of how Sherry had disappeared about a year and a half ago and not been heard from. Everyone thought she'd run away, but now she was back. And there was a growing sense of urgency as Darius burst into the girl's bathroom and looked around wildly. It was empty and quiet save for the soft sound of giggling…in a stall…

            Darius looked toward the stall as the giggle turned to a scream of pure immense animal pain. He ran to the stall door and kicked it open. The girl was in Sherry's arms, held tight as her face was buried against her naked breast, twin rivulets of blood running from the corner of her mouth down the slender curve toward the girl's nipple.

            "Get away from her!" Instead of the eroticism such a sight would normally provide, Darius was filled only with horror and disgust as he realized that this girl was being eaten, her _blood _was being sucked by the Sherry thing. Then the Sherry thing looked up at Darius and it was the same decayed face he'd seen in his vision, the same rotting fangs. Sherry-thing dropped the girl and turned toward Darius, licking her lips in a horrible show of loving how her "food" tasted.  

            "Mm…another snack!" Sherry-thing croaked before lunging for Darius. The young man threw both his hands up. 

            "No!" He shouted as he saw Sherry thing's mouth open to show extended fangs aimed for his throat. He felt something warm bloom inside of him and she stopped dead in her tracks as her mouth seemed to snap shut against her will and she glared cold fire at Darius. 

            "What are you?" She hissed, backing up. Without bothering to fix her sweater, the girl in the pink sweater was standing up, staring in slack jawed horror at Sherry, obviously seeing the same thing that Darius saw…then chaos erupted…

_It was insane. The girl's name, it turned out, was __Aspen__. She's 25 years old and God is she a looker. Too bad she's gay, or I'd ask her out in a heartbeat. Anyway…that's not what's important. Focus Darius…okay. The thing that used to be Sherry didn't see it coming. A glowing sword of some sort seemed to just…materialize in __Aspen__'s hand. She leaped at Sherry at the same time as Sherry tried to claw me with her fingernails, which were really wicked sharp._

_Aspen_ got there first and she swung her fiery sword hard, and hit home. It sliced down into Sherry's shoulder, seeming to nearly take off her arm, but she was hardly effected. She slammed her fist into the side of my head and threw me halfway across the bathroom before I could blink. But __Aspen___ was screaming now, a scary sight. Her blonde hair was messed up, her bloody breast was still showing and she was repeatedly shoving her glowing blade into Sherry's stomach, stabbing her until she fell onto the ground and just turned to dust when she hacked off her head._

_ That was some crazy shit. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but as we ran away from the mall, __Aspen__ told me that she'd been almost instantly smitten with Sherry when they'd just met in the food court. They'd giggled a bit and talked before Sherry had offered to get __Aspen__ off in a bathroom stall. Oh how red I turned when _Aspen___ admitted that like she was saying the sky was blue. But anyway, she said that she hadn't expected to be bitten, only that it felt horrible at first, but then better than anything she'd ever felt afterward. So she had sort of zoned out until she heard my voice. Then she'd heard another voice in her head, just like I did...she said it told her that Sherry tried to drain her life, and must be destroyed. Next thing she knew, she was holding a sword made of fire. And the rest I already told you. I gave __Aspen__ my number, I hope to God she calls me soon. I'm scared, and I'm cold. Mom's not home and the darkness is just as bad as it was when I was five years old and my Dad used to hold me and tell me that there were no monsters out there to get me. I knew he was a liar…that was just one of the few things I had hoped he wouldn't lie about._


	2. Dealing with it

**Aspen******

            Aspen awoke to the sound of the damn songbirds outside her window. The moment her eyes opened that surreal feeling that she was still in a dream hit her and she closed them again. Those damn songbirds weren't shutting up. So nope, no such luck. The night before…it had been horrible. She'd had an encounter in the mall with that monster thing and that young boy.  He'd saved her, or at least distracted the monster while she got that…vision. And that power. As she sat up and pushed the covers back, she looked down in amazement at the hand that had wielded the sword and shook her head.

            It was time for school soon anyway. Maybe if she just concentrated on going to classes, it would stay a dream like thing and the full impact of how scary this was wouldn't hit her. Aspen's feet swung around and hit the cold bare floor and she stood, walking to her dresser and pulling out a bra and a pair of panties, and a pair of jeans and a tight t-shirt. She walked into the bathroom adjoining her room and turned on the hot water in the shower before turning to examine herself in the mirror.

            Aspen was a classic beauty with delicate features and dark blonde hair that she allowed to fall about her shoulders. Her eyes were blue and she had aquiline features that made her look like a poster girl. Her body was slender and had womanly curves that caught the eye, though naked at the moment with the big bruise on her shoulder and the cuts from where that thing had bit her just above her full right breast made her grimace. She turned and got into the shower, allowing it to ease the tension in her muscles she hadn't even realized she'd had when she woke up.

She got dressed in a hurry and headed out to her Honda Civic, her backpack slung over her left shoulder. The December wind was bitingly cold, but it carried no snowflakes. It was almost a gyp, she mused. All that miserable cold weather without any of the fun of being able to play in the snow! 

            A sight that made Aspen drop her backpack on the ground with a loud thud interrupted her musings. Her neighbor Mister Rawlins was outside fetching his morning paper, but there was something WRONG about him. To her sight he seemed to have black veins pulsing with thick sludgy black blood on an almost translucent skin instead of just plain old Mister Rawlins the real estate broker. 

            When he looked up at Aspen, she scrambled to pick her backpack up and get in her car, backing out of her driveway and flooring the pedal so that her tires squealed as she shot out onto the street. The drive to college was the same, everywhere she looked, hidden among normal unsuspecting people, were monsters. They all looked different to her, and they all looked WRONG. It made her want to scream.

            Aspen's day didn't get any better. When she got out of school, she went home and locked all of her doors, having seen more of them on the way home. She had broken out into a sweat and was beginning to seriously doubt her sanity. There had to be someone else that was experiencing this. Maybe Darius! Yes, the boy who'd given him her number! 

            Aspen ran to the bathroom and began rummaging around in the hamper until she found the bloodstained jeans she'd worn the night before. She lifted them out and shook them a couple of times before rifling through the pockets to find the number the kid had given her. 

            She couldn't dial the phone fast enough. The phone rang three times before someone picked it up.

            "Hello?" It was the kid's voice, she knew it.

            "Darius? It's Aspen…can you come over? I feel like last night was so…surreal…and I'm seeing them…everywhere and…" Aspen trailed off. She felt a lump rising in her throat as she struggled to control her fear. No sense scaring the kid too.

            "Oh, hi there Aspen." Darius had a coy tone in his voice that she recognized from guys that thought they were flirting, or possibly shy because they thought she was flirting. It wasn't something she could put up with.

            "Can you come over or not?!" She barked into the phone. There was a moment of surprised silence on the other end of the line.

            "Yeah, sure…geez. Chill. Where do you live?" He said after a minute. Aspen rattled off her address, repeating it once so she could be sure he got it. "I'll be there soon as I can." Darius said, and hung up without further ado. Now all she could do was wait for him to come over.


	3. Newsflash

            **December 16, 2003****. ****5:32PM******

Darius hung up the phone after Aspen called him and took a breath. There was a lot he'd found out in one night. And he looked like hell as a result of having stayed up all night to actually do the research. The internet had always seemed a viable option. So when he found a website that posted a survey on supernatural experiences, something about freedom or some such...he'd taken the survey and been invited to join their mailing list.

_All these people…they're like me. They've seen monsters, and a lot of them sound like their experiences were like mine…maybe they can be help. But…some of them seem a little crazy…best to trust no one with this yet, but at least I can show __Aspen__._

            Darius took a quick shower before he grabbed his letter jacket and pulled it on as he stepped outside and walked down the sidewalk toward his car at the curb. It was cold out, the wind ripping right through the protection of his jacket to make his teeth chatter. It was almost like a gyp like this though, no snow to play in, yet freezing temperature. In a childish way it pissed him off.

            Inside his car wasn't much better, and he cranked up the heat for the drive toward the address Aspen had given him. She lived in a nice house, either she did well for herself or someone really took care of her. It was a one story house, but spacious and the outside looked well kept up. Darius smiled a little bit as he stepped out of the car. Just before walking in, he retrieved a small zippered bag from the glove compartment and slipped it into his jacket pocket. The one thing that made a lot of sense from some of the backposts he'd read in that mailing list on Hunter-net (as they self titled it) was that it was a good idea to constantly be armed. He just hoped Aspen had one.

            As Darius stepped onto the front stoop of her house, the powder blue door swung open and Aspen stood there looking as pissed as she did scared. Her blonde hair was mussed, and for a moment Darius found himself disappointed she had a shirt on, rather having that image from yesterday burned into his head. He must have been staring because her tone was icy when she spoke.

            "Yes. I have tits. Get over it." Aspen growled as she crossed her arms over her ample breasts and waited for him to get inside, stepping aside.

            Darius felt his cheeks flush hot and he stepped inside, avoiding her gaze. It was a nice living room that he entered, and he immediately sat down on the couch, casting his gaze back to her as she stood by the door. 

            "So..have you found out anything?" He asked Aspen shyly.

**Aspen******

            Aspen sighed as the kid took on that same coy tone. It made her want to stick her foot up his ass. She vaguely wondered if he realized that. From the continuous look he gave her, it was unlikely. She sighed to herself and shook her head at his question.

            "Well here's what I found out Aspen. There are others like us out there. I found this mailing list on the internet after I filled out this survey. And…I guess this has been happening to different people around the world since about four years ago. Here's the thing. Monsters control the world Aspen. They have, supposedly, for as long as there's been civilization. And there's not just…dead girls. From the posts I've read, there's shapeshifters, vampires, zombies, ghosts…the whole lot. I'll introduce you to this website soon..but…that's about the gist of it." Darius took a breath and looked up at her finally. 

            Aspen stared at him cynically. She wanted to make a defense against that. She wanted to tell him not to believe everything he read on the computer. But the encounter was still fresh in his mind to deny it. The world was run by monsters and there wasn't anything she could do to deny it. She took a seat next to him, and her shoulders started shaking. It was only a moment before she allowed herself to press her face to his shoulder and start crying softly. She was scared, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. She hated showing weakness, but she had a feeling it was either this or just completely and totally break down.


End file.
